ups of yellow sugar and one of
creamed butter, add the soaked crumbs and mix very smooth. Meantime,
soak a cup of raisins, seeded and halved, a cup of clean currants, a cup
of shredded citron, a cup of nut meats broken small, in a tumbler of
sherry, a tumbler of rum, and wineglass of apricot brandy. Add the fruit
when well soaked to the eggs and sugar, putting in any surplus liquors.
Mix in gradually a teaspoonful of cinnamon, the same of cloves and
allspice, half a cup of preserved ginger sliced very thin, and a very
tiny dusting of black pepper and paprika. Beat smooth, then fold in the
stiffly beaten egg-whites alternately with a cup of browned flour. If
too thick to stir handily thin with a little milk or boiling water. Pour
into a clean pudding bag, freshly scalded, leaving room for the pudding
to swell, put in a deep kettle of boiling water, and boil for five
hours, filling up the kettle as needed with boiling water so as not to
check the cooking. Make several days beforehand, and boil an extra hour
upon Christmas day. Serve in a blaze of brandy, with a very rich sauce,
either fruit or wine flavored.

_Pudding Sauce_: (Mrs. Barbara Clayton.) Beat together until very light,
one cup white sugar, one cup creamed butter, and the yolks of three
eggs. Beat the egg whites very stiff with another cup of sugar, add to
the yolks and butter, beat hard together, then put in double boiler and
cook until thick. Put two wineglasses of good whiskey in a bowl, pour
the hot sauce upon it, and whip hard until light.

[Illustration: _Creole Cookery_]

Exotics rarely flower in native splendor after transplanting. Milly was
the exception, proving the rule. Bred in New Orleans, steeped in its
atmosphere, its traditions, a cook of degree, and daughter of a cook to
whom, though past middle age, she paid the most reverent homage, she yet
kept her magic touch amid the crush and hurly-burly of New York town,
albeit she never grew acclimated nor even content. This in spite of a
mistress she adored--in virtue of having served her ten years down in
the home city. When at last Milly went back to her own, there was
wailing amongst all of us, who had eaten her cooking, but the mistress
smiled, rather sadly, to be sure, saying: "I could not beg her to
stay--she was so unhappy here."

Milly never had quite a free hand--New York markets know not many things
familiar to those of the Crescent City. Notwithstanding, she was a
liberal educati